Millie stood on top of one of the giant pillars that jutted out of the water. Her tail twitched a little. She could see the Palace that stood even higher than this in the distance. Her gaze went down the the water below, her heart speeding up as she realized that she was still quite high. A fear of heights never truly vanished.

But she was fine, its fine. Millie focused on the lines of vehicles that went over the water and the walkways. The cat-girl glanced across the water now, towards a particular neon sign. "So... I know where we are."

She could smell the pollution in the air. The whole place reeked of corruption. Millie turned her head to look at Stone.

Stone crouched on the edge of the tower, her hackles a bit on edge from the sheer height. She wasn't a fan of being up so high without a specific goal, and she just settled for surveying the town below. Lots of insignificant people, doing their storyline things that probably just involved repeating the same two sentences over and over. Not a bad gig for them, but she still wasn't sure why she and Millie were there.

"Not exactly. I mean, the place is corrupt, there's a drug dealer in with the Palace, though the Palace also sets things up for him to be stopped from doing things. There's bad eco trade. Eco being the lifeblood of the planet but it's also fairly infinite. Everything is powered of Eco."

She knelt down a bit. "We have to be careful not to reveal our abilities or we will be hunted down by the guards." She paused. What were Heartless doing marching along with the guards in such a docile matter?

"Can I see your gun real quick? I'm just gonna look through the scope."

Stone listened along, but then paused and took a better look at the guard patrols around as she handed Millie her spotter scope. Nothing seemed amiss from where she was sitting, but the more she looked... Well, okay then.

"Want me to start releasing some hearts? I can totally do it from up here."

Stone took the scope back and paused, evaluating their options before putting a hand on Millie's shoulder. This was definitely her job now, not Millie's.

"This is the thief in me talking now, but if you go around as a stranger asking pointed questions about government operations, that's just about the fastest way to get surveillance posted on us no matter what we're wearing. C'mon, let's go find a bar or somewhere we can sit for a couple hours and not attract attention." She walked around on top of the pillar a bit, then glanced back at Millie. "Really, I don't know how to get down from here."

"Well, I do know one bar..." Millie hadn't wanted to go there... Is Krew still alive? Possibly. Then she heard the next bit Stone said.

"Oh, this way." She walked over to the edge. There were a few pipes and things that provided a good way down if you didn't miss the jump. Of course, Millie could fly, so she could easily just jump from the top. "It's not exactly easy, but not too hard either."

Ah, excellent. Stone had no problem clambering down the side of the tower once she had a few decent handholds, although she had gotten a bit rusty at the whole 'climbing large buildings with no gear' since the last time she had pulled a real heist. Of course, that streak seemed like it was going to end sooner rather than later at the rate things were going here. She was on the ground almost as quickly as Millie, jumping and blinking around the side of the tower without missing a beat before finally dropping to her feet in the shadow of the great pillar.

"Right, let's be careful end not reveal our abilities if we don't have to, hide your ears too." She knew that these people all had rather unique ears, looking like elves, but it was better not to have too much of an abnormality.

"So... We got the Hip-Hog Saloon. It's a uh... Its a bar and the guy who leads it is a... The closest analogue is a drug lord. He deals in Eco. He's also fat. Very fat, literally can't move or leave the front door. So he has a hoverchair." She shivered. Millie walked along the walkway, steering clear of a Heartless guard patrol.

Stone took a moment to fluff her hair over her ears and stuff her tail into the back of her shirt, looking for all the world like a reasonably normal person as she walked around. She gave the Heartless a wide berth, definitely not getting within anything resembling an aggro radius of them. Maybe they really were docile, but just because something was possible didn't mean she was going to believe it. Still, the walkways around the port were fairly devoid of foot traffic, so she felt comfortable whispering for the time being.

"If we want to get anything out of these people, we can't just go around asking during the day. We need to get back out here after sunset, then start dragging people into alleys and demanding answers. Then we disappear and even if they do report it, they have no idea who we are. You get the idea?"

"I just want to know why the Heartless are following the Krimson Guard, if we can figure that out..." Millie sighed. "Krew might have some ties that we can get with a few oddjobs, not that I want to work with h-"

"Attention citizens, do not be alarmed. Those creatures that are with the guards are the result of our Dark Warrior Project, the metal heads will be defeated by their hardworking!" The voice of Baron Praxis echoed from one of the propaganda stations scattered throughout the city.

Stone listened along, thinking some sort of underworld favors might be immensely helpful for this kind of job, but that ship sank in the harbor when the announcement came on and gave them more of an idea of the scope of what they were going to be dealing with. She knew nothing about the world, but she had a general idea of what things with names like 'Dark Warrior Project' meant.

"So, uh, new plan. Tell me anything you can about this Dark Warrior thing and I'll try to come up with a way to break in and get a look at it firsthand."

"The Dark Warrior Project wouldn't create Heartless that's for sure. The main character of the game was the final experiment and Baron Praxis, the man's voice you just heard, had deemed it a failure." She closed her eyes and thought.

"They pumped Dark Eco into Jak, countless others, but Jak was the only one to survive, the others all died. They had been trying to make the perfect warrior. I know where the experiment took place. Exactly where, and I know how to get too it, but it's in the middle of the Krimson Guard headquarters, too dangerous." Millie wrinkled her nose.

"There's gotta be an explanation..." She began thinking of all the characters of the game. "Ashlen might know, but she's hard to get to, the closest connection to her would be Torn, the second in command of the Underground, a rebel force against Baron Praxis."

Millie was just... Talking, quietly sure, but it was also a lot of information to dump all at once.

Okay, so. Lots of things to run through all at once. Dark project that was almost certainly evil, check. Supersoldier project, check. Powerful government agency that had gone from said evil project to somehow corralling and recruiting the forces of darkness and despair, check. Main facility in a place incredibly hard to break into, at least for Millie. Finally, the one glimmer of hope in all of this.

"Okay, rebel forces. That's who we want to talk to, at least while I'm working on a way into the Project headquarters. If we're really lucky they'll have blueprints for the facility, or at least some more information we can use on this. Think they'll be interested if we introduce ourselves as experts on the Heartless and confident that nothing good can possibly come of this?"

Millie sighed. "I think introducing ourselves as Interferences would work just as well. It's time to actually do our job for once, it seems." Millie looked across the port to the other side.

"We might also want to stop by Krew's place, at least, for a moment, just to hear what else is going on from anyone who wanders in. More information before we go hunting down the Underground." That and she needed to know where in the story she was dropped in as soon as possible.

"Sounds good. C'mon, I could use a drink." Stone wasted no time in heading over to the bar and settling in at one of the corner tables with a decent-sized mug of ale. Not exactly her usual liquor, but she was going to need a clear head for everything tonight as she simply listened to what was going on and let Millie do her thing.

Millie sat down in the booth across from Stone, not grabbing a drink of her own, she didn't want to get drunk, or taste alcohol. She was mostly just listening. She saw Tess, so that was one indication on how far into the story they were. The big breasted woman filling cups for patrons that had wandered in. Krew, thankfully, was nowhere to be found.

Just hearing rumors. There was apparently one circulating that someone had broken into the Palace.

"Have you heard? The metal head attacks are becoming less frequent. Maybe we're finally winning this war." One of the men in the room said, a grin plastered on his face. "Then we can go back to living normally."

Millie knee the approximate location in the timeliness they were in, but it was surely altered. The Metal Heads were supposed to be winning! Was it because of the Heartless. She had a worried look on her face.

Stone watched and listened as well, sipping her drink down at a steady pace and doing her best to get nice and flushed from it. She could hold her own with the bravest of nords, but she was also a four-foot-tall waif and knew she could use that to her advantage as she staggered over to the bar.

"Howbout dem big guys, then? Pretty cool, eh?" She nodded at the barmaid, smiling like a girl that had had one pint too many. "What are those things, anyway?"

The barmaid glanced over at them, they were docile of course. "The Dark Warriors, you mean you haven't heard?" Her tone was hushed. Tess didn't like them, obviously. They were dangerous, she had seen them chasing down criminals before. And considering her connections... Best not to think on that.

Millie in the meantime watched Stone. Her hands messing with a bracelet she wore. It seemed like this was generating a small bit of stress in the young girl.

"They are apparently our trump card against the Metal Heads, but I don't like 'em one bit." Tess put down the cup she was cleaning and moved on to the next, placing another cup down in front of the off duty guard.

So the heartless weren't the beloved protectors of humanity after all. Very interesting, and Stone filed that away as something she might be able to use. Of course, she didn't want to be too familiar with random people off the street; she had no idea what the police state of this world was like, and even if this woman was safe there could still be other surveillance around listening to them.

"Yah, I don' like 'em either. Seems almost... I dunno. Evil? They just look like they shouldn't be alive, if ya get my meanin'."